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Description
In the Looser Union World of 1920, the world is largely dominated by ornate, decadent aristocracies. This is reflected in their art and architecture. In France, the world's greatest power dontcha know, Pseudo-African sits comfortably alongside Neo-Classical. Each power's sphere has their own style. While the French fuse Classical, African and Pacific influences, Germania takes elements from their past and romanticises them into grand palaces and Gothic memorials. Although often the craftsmanship of these structures is masked beneath the filth of the Second Industrial Revolution which has made these two powers so great.

Technology is ahead of OTL, with working Analytical Engines having been built in Britain in the 1860s. The last great war was won with planes and war machines rather than formations of soldiers. The world is on the verge of a Third Industrial Revolution fuelled by a growing mastery over metallurgy, electricity and computing. Cars buzz loudly on streets in every major city in the world, but these are mostly powered by electricity rather than petrol.

France replaced Britain as the world's premier power in the Second and Hopefully Last Great War. Before that, Britain was ruled by an elite class of ideologically 'scientific' aristocrats. Other nations copied them, and so the world is covered in grand industrial projects. France is planning a grand railway system connecting Algeria, Ethiopia and Niger across the Sahara. Elsewhere, rivers have been diverted to water less inhabitable regions, dams built to harness hydroelectric power, and fleets of planes take to the air making those far flung colonies feel that bit less foreign.

Styles and dress, while far more varied from nation to nation than in OTL, are still very much gender divided and conservative. While the Russian men have taken to growing long beards and wearing turbans and robes, that doesn't mean the women are allowed to dress up like a member of a Sultan's harem. Unless they are a member of a Sultan's harem. Politics are even more conservative. You should know your place. This is a world where aristocrats are on top and the rest of us have to tug the forelock and deal with it. On the other hand, racial and gender politics are rather more advanced than OTL's 1920s. Race in particular is less divisive than it was. With adoption of African aesthetic and cultural practices, Africans in French colonies are increasingly looked on as just brown French people. And of course, French cultural mores are being taken up in Africa and their other colonies.

World politics revolve around a few great powers.
The greatest of these is the French Empire, continuously run by Bonapartes since the start of the 19th century. Stretching over Belgium, the Rhineland and Piedmont, not only is France bigger, its empire is bigger as well. A continuous stretch of 'Principalities' connect the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. That doesn't take into account their territory on the Arab Peninsular, and in Central Africa, south of American Guinea. Elsewhere, they control Patagonia in South America, most of the Pacific Ocean, Cuba and Hispaniola, New Zealand and Indochina. Their sphere of influence stretches even farther, over most of South America, Northeast Asia, the Pacific Coast, and the Mediterranean is dominated by the French. France is a relatively liberal power in comparison to many others around the world but also very conservative when compared to the most radical. France's economy grows ever faster, but as industry spreads to the colonies nationalism grows amongst the colonial masses who feel that as the fruits of their labour make France ever mightier they deserve a greater say in what France does with its might. France is the land of the big, with mighty cities, overweening corporations, and grand plans. A eugenic programme of breeding to try and Gallicise Africans while bettering the French genepool is being attempted with little understanding of the ramifications.

Second in might is Germania, which coalesced around the Hapsburgs in this world. Now stretching from the North Sea to the Black Sea down to the Mediterranean, Germania is at the height of its powers. It leads OstEuropa Block (Germania, Shkiperia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, White Russia, Courland, and Pskov. Scandinavia and Prussia are observers). This operates as a military alliance and economic agreement. Germania increasingly styles itself after the great Germanic empires of the past, romanticising medieval warfare and building in a new Neo-Gothic style. However all is not perfect in Germania's medieval industrial age wonderland. Hungarians, Slavs, Rumanians, and Italians are all calling either for independence or union with a neighbouring motherland. This means over half of the empire doesn't really want to be part of it. And that doesn't take into account the Emirates. The German sphere also stretches into disintegrating Osmanlia, a multi-ethnic weirdly fascist state with pan-Islamist overtones.

Russia is a vast empire which is increasingly reorientating itself around Central Asia rather than Eastern Europe. Stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic circle, and from the Finnish border to Bering straits it is undeniably the greatest contiguous empire. Oddly in this aristocratic world, Russia is quite liberal. The Empire's richest men are the sons of peasants not nobles. While the Tsar remains the biggest power in Russia, his Deputies are also powerful, and the rapidly industrialising state is threatening to turn into a big challenger to French global hegemony. Orthodoxy is stronger than ever though increasingly flavoured with Chinese and Muslim ideas.

The former British Empire is an aberration in a world of powerful nobles. It was only last year that another coup occurred though this one is looking a little more stable than its predecessors. It is at the moment at least, the world's only socialist power. For now, it is divided into 'Autonomies' with a Commission for Integration working to bring them together. But it is predicted that this will not take long because the old Empire was a very multiethnic place, and while integration of India fully into the British Salutariat is a knotty question it is hardly the first on their list. Even after losing the Second Great War and the string of revolutions and coups, Britain is the world's most industrialised power and it is in Britain that the Third Industrial Revolution is brewing. Its mightiest cities of London, Glasgow, Liverpool (in Australia), Cairo, New Zion, New Dehli, and Kingston are all so cosmopolitan and varied that they make even Paris look dull in comparison. Across the sea is a more standard state by this world's standards. The North America Control or the Kingdom of Borealia is the last remnant of the former British Empire in its old style. But it has not reacted well to the revolutionary sentiments across the world, and within itself. Aristocracy and corporate power are rising, and various policies from Osmanlia and Russia have been imported to put down those annoying working class rioters.

China is now under a very strange Christian-Socialist government, which while it started with Baptist revolutionaries are absorbing elements of Orthodoxy from Russia, which is their closest ally. There are vast regions of the country which continue to raise the banner of a form of Buddhist nationalism, and form a major source of migration to various places around the world.

Japan was opened to the world by France, but is now outgrowing their former master. With French patronage, they've expanded their sphere of influence over Korea and Manchuria and have annexed Sakhalin. They do have to put up with French treaty ports on the coast, but for now they are happy to be close ally of the world's greatest empire. But within Japan there are those who grow restive and want to expand the Empire into the Pacific and into Asia either into Siberia or into the rebellious regions of China.

Description
In the Looser Union World of 1920, the world is largely dominated by ornate, decadent aristocracies. This is reflected in their art and architecture. In France, the world's greatest power dontcha know, Pseudo-African sits comfortably alongside Neo-Classical. Each power's sphere has their own style. While the French fuse Classical, African and Pacific influences, Germania takes elements from their past and romanticises them into grand palaces and Gothic memorials. Although often the craftsmanship of these structures is masked beneath the filth of the Second Industrial Revolution which has made these two powers so great.

Technology is ahead of OTL, with working Analytical Engines having been built in Britain in the 1860s. The last great war was won with planes and war machines rather than formations of soldiers. The world is on the verge of a Third Industrial Revolution fuelled by a growing mastery over metallurgy, electricity and computing. Cars buzz loudly on streets in every major city in the world, but these are mostly powered by electricity rather than petrol.

France replaced Britain as the world's premier power in the Second and Hopefully Last Great War. Before that, Britain was ruled by an elite class of ideologically 'scientific' aristocrats. Other nations copied them, and so the world is covered in grand industrial projects. France is planning a grand railway system connecting Algeria, Ethiopia and Niger across the Sahara. Elsewhere, rivers have been diverted to water less inhabitable regions, dams built to harness hydroelectric power, and fleets of planes take to the air making those far flung colonies feel that bit less foreign.

Styles and dress, while far more varied from nation to nation than in OTL, are still very much gender divided and conservative. While the Russian men have taken to growing long beards and wearing turbans and robes, that doesn't mean the women are allowed to dress up like a member of a Sultan's harem. Unless they are a member of a Sultan's harem. Politics are even more conservative. You should know your place. This is a world where aristocrats are on top and the rest of us have to tug the forelock and deal with it. On the other hand, racial and gender politics are rather more advanced than OTL's 1920s. Race in particular is less divisive than it was. With adoption of African aesthetic and cultural practices, Africans in French colonies are increasingly looked on as just brown French people. And of course, French cultural mores are being taken up in Africa and their other colonies.

World politics revolve around a few great powers.
The greatest of these is the French Empire, continuously run by Bonapartes since the start of the 19th century. Stretching over Belgium, the Rhineland and Piedmont, not only is France bigger, its empire is bigger as well. A continuous stretch of 'Principalities' connect the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. That doesn't take into account their territory on the Arab Peninsular, and in Central Africa, south of American Guinea. Elsewhere, they control Patagonia in South America, most of the Pacific Ocean, Cuba and Hispaniola, New Zealand and Indochina. Their sphere of influence stretches even farther, over most of South America, Northeast Asia, the Pacific Coast, and the Mediterranean is dominated by the French. France is a relatively liberal power in comparison to many others around the world but also very conservative when compared to the most radical. France's economy grows ever faster, but as industry spreads to the colonies nationalism grows amongst the colonial masses who feel that as the fruits of their labour make France ever mightier they deserve a greater say in what France does with its might. France is the land of the big, with mighty cities, overweening corporations, and grand plans. A eugenic programme of breeding to try and Gallicise Africans while bettering the French genepool is being attempted with little understanding of the ramifications.

Second in might is Germania, which coalesced around the Hapsburgs in this world. Now stretching from the North Sea to the Black Sea down to the Mediterranean, Germania is at the height of its powers. It leads OstEuropa Block (Germania, Shkiperia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, White Russia, Courland, and Pskov. Scandinavia and Prussia are observers). This operates as a military alliance and economic agreement. Germania increasingly styles itself after the great Germanic empires of the past, romanticising medieval warfare and building in a new Neo-Gothic style. However all is not perfect in Germania's medieval industrial age wonderland. Hungarians, Slavs, Rumanians, and Italians are all calling either for independence or union with a neighbouring motherland. This means over half of the empire doesn't really want to be part of it. And that doesn't take into account the Emirates. The German sphere also stretches into disintegrating Osmanlia, a multi-ethnic weirdly fascist state with pan-Islamist overtones.

Russia is a vast empire which is increasingly reorientating itself around Central Asia rather than Eastern Europe. Stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic circle, and from the Finnish border to Bering straits it is undeniably the greatest contiguous empire. Oddly in this aristocratic world, Russia is quite liberal. The Empire's richest men are the sons of peasants not nobles. While the Tsar remains the biggest power in Russia, his Deputies are also powerful, and the rapidly industrialising state is threatening to turn into a big challenger to French global hegemony. Orthodoxy is stronger than ever though increasingly flavoured with Chinese and Muslim ideas.

The former British Empire is an aberration in a world of powerful nobles. It was only last year that another coup occurred though this one is looking a little more stable than its predecessors. It is at the moment at least, the world's only socialist power. For now, it is divided into 'Autonomies' with a Commission for Integration working to bring them together. But it is predicted that this will not take long because the old Empire was a very multiethnic place, and while integration of India fully into the British Salutariat is a knotty question it is hardly the first on their list. Even after losing the Second Great War and the string of revolutions and coups, Britain is the world's most industrialised power and it is in Britain that the Third Industrial Revolution is brewing. Its mightiest cities of London, Glasgow, Liverpool (in Australia), Cairo, New Zion, New Dehli, and Kingston are all so cosmopolitan and varied that they make even Paris look dull in comparison. Across the sea is a more standard state by this world's standards. The North America Control or the Kingdom of Borealia is the last remnant of the former British Empire in its old style. But it has not reacted well to the revolutionary sentiments across the world, and within itself. Aristocracy and corporate power are rising, and various policies from Osmanlia and Russia have been imported to put down those annoying working class rioters.

China is now under a very strange Christian-Socialist government, which while it started with Baptist revolutionaries are absorbing elements of Orthodoxy from Russia, which is their closest ally. There are vast regions of the country which continue to raise the banner of a form of Buddhist nationalism, and form a major source of migration to various places around the world.

Japan was opened to the world by France, but is now outgrowing their former master. With French patronage, they've expanded their sphere of influence over Korea and Manchuria and have annexed Sakhalin. They do have to put up with French treaty ports on the coast, but for now they are happy to be close ally of the world's greatest empire. But within Japan there are those who grow restive and want to expand the Empire into the Pacific and into Asia either into Siberia or into the rebellious regions of China.